MONTREAL — Since taking a senior executive role with Sun Life Financial in Montreal six years ago, Isabelle Hudon has led the company to triple the sales of wealth products in the province of Quebec and doubled its protection product sales.

Not bad for someone without any previous experience in finance or insurance.

Many employers wouldn’t have even considered someone from outside the financial industry for such a job, however, executive headhunter Brigitte Simard saw it differently.

“We were not looking for an expert in financial services,” Simard said. “We were looking for a great leader who would be able to transform that business.”

As LinkedIn gives employers access to a nearly inexhaustible number of resumés, unconventional, yet ultimately successful placements like Hudon’s are one way executive headhunting firms say they add value in an increasingly competitive industry that’s facing major disruption.

Even with the rise of technology, headhunting firms say there’s still a need for boots on the ground. Simard is a case in point. She was recently headhunted from Spencer Stuart executive search firm to run Russell Reynolds executive firm’s new office in Montreal.

“We need to be on the ground and it’s not just to work in Montreal, but also for a number of Quebec companies that are doing work in Europe, Asia and Latin America,” said Russell Reynolds CEO Clarke Murphy, who is based in New York. The company has 46 offices around the world.

Those in the industry say headhunting has been slow to change in the 70 or so years it’s been around, but as more companies have started using LinkedIn and building their own in-house recruitment departments, much external search work has become obsolete at the mid-level.

Growth industry

The scope for search firms may be narrowing to the top tier, but this doesn’t mean the industry is shrinking. According to the Association of Executive Search and Leadership Consultants, the industry is growing globally, from US$9.55 billion in 2010 to US$12.41 billion in 2015.

Toronto-based Carl Lovas, the Canadian chairman of Odgers Berndtson, said between 2013 and 2015, the firm’s revenues grew more than 50 per cent and the company’s C-suite search involvement rose as much as 60 per cent.

“We believe that even though we can provide services globally to our clients it’s important for us to be in the same place where they work and to understand the cultural difference between cities,” Lovas said.

Ensuring that search firms have people in a variety of cities is one way of adapting to the changes in the industry.

“With the progression of technology I think there is a seismic shift in the recruitment industry,” Hearn said, adding many companies are beefing up their own HR departments to find candidates for mid-level positions.

Hearn said this has increased competition at the executive level, forcing firms to offer more than just a list of eligible candidates for the job.

Montreal-based Roger Duguay, the head of the Boyden executive search firm’s Quebec operations, said recruitment companies must change with the times.

“Before, the power of a firm like us was a lot of the Rolodex: the contacts you have, the information,” Duguay said. “Now it’s not like that at all.

“Clients are a lot smarter and they expect us to be smarter, more creative and more aligned with their needs.”

Many in the executive search industry say the age of the generalist CEO is over and that companies now look for specific and often evolving leadership skills.

“The bottom line is that now there is much more of a market for top executives and CEOs than there was in the ’60s or ’70s,” said Pierre Chaigneau, a professor at Montreal’s HEC business school.

Regional specialists

Although the search for the best in class is becoming more and more global, having local staff familiar with a region’s unique needs can be a specialization itself.

And Quebec has a unique set of challenges when it comes to recruiting. The most obvious point is a potential language barrier for executives who don’t speak both English and French, though Russell Reynolds’ Murphy says he believes at the executive level speaking at least two languages has become “de rigueur.”

However, because of an increased global demand it can also be hard to keep the best executives around.

“The biggest change in our industry and for our firm is that we’re as much in retention business in the past six to eight years as we are in the recruiting business,” said Murphy.

At the same time, he said the fact that a potential hire is already employed doesn’t stop his firm from going after them.

“We look for the talent and the competencies needed first, and then figure out who are the best people are — never who’s available but who’s best suited to achieve that strategy and what’s required to achieve it,” Murphy said.

Sun Life’s Hudon says she was so satisfied with Simard’s work that she has kept her as a special advisor to help find other — sometimes unconventional — candidates for the company.

“What we do is a combination of art and science, but it’s also about understanding the businesses and in what environment they are evolving,” said Simard.